BA in Art Fairs

There aren't many things that you can count on being the same in every country in the world, but one such universal fact is the art fair, which migrates intact wherever it re-emerges. Such was the case at ArteBA 2010, the 19th annual art show in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that opened Thursday night. The event consisted of the type of fanfare cozily familiar for art professionals, although typically north of the equator. Over 80 galleries participated in the event, hailing from locations almost exclusively in Latin America, with the exception of a few galleries from Europe and the United States, like Fernando Pradilla from Madrid and Miami's Dot FiftyOne.

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Bridges Across Canal

In homage to the permeability of even this country's densest neighborhood, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's installation Avenue of the Americas occupies an undeveloped lot near the Holland Tunnel, where Canal, Varick, Grand, and Sixth Avenue intersect. The exhibition, which includes four commissioned works by Julieta Aranda, Carlos Motta and David Sanin Paz, Judi Werthein and Carla Zaccanigni, is easy to miss, enclosed as it is by a forbidding chain link fence next to the entrance to the 1 train. Located in a square that will escape the notice of most commuters traveling through the Holland Tunnel, the works address issues of Latin American's cultural history and identity as it has evolved since the beginning of the Cold War, when Sixth Avenue was renamed the Avenue of the Americas by Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1945 to honor "Pan-American ideals and principles."
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Feel Greater

Although Greater New York takes up the entirety of the recently further-folded-in PS1 at MoMA, the crowd at Thursday's preview reception stayed mostly outdoors, lounging on the steps like students of New York's contemporary art during a recess break. The quintennial show of emerging artists from the metropolitan area features 68 artists and artist collectives, has an air of optimism, both in the work and in the feeling of the artists who lingered near it. Artists seemed unanimously happy with the installation—a real rarity.
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Diamonds Are Forever

At the tail end of the perfect weather last week, a new Richard Prince exhibition, Richard Prince: The Tiffany Paintings arrived at the Gagosian Gallery uptown. The opening of the show of recent large-scale paintings and newsprint collages was celebrated at a rooftop cocktail party that could have been memorialized in society pages, and covered with thick layers of paint. The overall reception of the works was positive, although the crowd mostly lingered on the terrace outdoors, where the air was warm and the lights from Park Avenue apartments twinkled like jewels (or, perhaps, Tiffany's diamonds) as the daylight began to fade. In the crowd, a soft-spoken Jeff Koons patiently indulged fans and journalists as they swarmed to get a word with him. "I really liked the show," he told me, moving languidly towards the exit. "I thought that the paintings were very moving."
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